Panasonic has admitted that its network was illegally accessed earlier this month during a hack. The Japanese firm claimed it was targeted on November 11 and discovered that certain data on a file server had been accessed during the breach.
The company said, “some data on a file server had been accessed during the intrusion.”
Panasonic stated in a statement that after discovering the illegal access, it quickly reported the issue to the appropriate authorities and adopted the necessary security measures:
“After detecting the unauthorized access, the company immediately reported the incident to the relevant authorities and implemented security countermeasures, including steps to prevent external access to the network,” Panasonic said. “Panasonic would like to express its sincerest apologies for any concern or inconvenience resulting from this incident.”
In addition to performing its probe, Panasonic is presently collaborating with a professional third-party company to examine the leak and establish if the breach impacted customers’ personal information or/and sensitive information connected to social infrastructure.
While the statement gave no more details, Japanese news agencies Mainichi and NHK reported that the breach began on June 22 and lasted till November 3. Panasonic did not reply to requests for comment. Still, in an interview with TechCrunch, the company verified the date and said that the November 11 date relates to when the breach was initially identified.
NHK said that the infected computers had information regarding Panasonic’s business partners and technologies, citing a ransomware strike on a company’s subsidiary in November that also exposed business information.
The firm told Mainichi that they couldn’t say if it would impact their business or performance, but they can’t rule out the prospect of a major event. According to The Record, this data leak may have included employee information as well. In March, Panasonic and McAfee agreed to establish a vehicle security operations center focused solely on cyberattacks.
